There are a multitude of known shoe and lacing designs for footwear. However, these known designs are deficient in light of the present invention. For instance, previous designs fail to adequately and comfortably secure a user's foot within the shoe. Traditional shoes have an upper central exterior lacing system wherein the lacing is usually channeled through a plurality of eyelets positioned generally on both sides of the center top of the shoe and in close proximity thereto. This type of design fails to provide adequate support by limiting the securing area to generally the upper portion of the foot. For instance, in sporting applications these traditional designs may be physically dangerous and reduce the athlete's performance by allowing the foot to slide or otherwise move within the shoe during use. In addition, because the lacing in traditional designs are exterior, undesired accidents including snagging on objects and tripping on lacing that becomes untied during use may result. Moreover, because of the dangers of the exposed lace of exterior-laced shoes becoming snagged on machinery and placing a user in dangerous positions, many companies forbid the use of these types of shoes in certain industrial applications. Additionally, the lacing of exterior-laced shoes is exposed to the shoes exterior environment and often results in premature wear.
Several attempts have been made to overcome some of these deficiencies. For instance, designs have been proposed wherein the lace system wraps around the heel portion of the shoe to provide a better means for securing the foot within the shoe. Examples of such designs may be found by reference to U.S. Pat. No. 5,775,006 to Breuner, U.S. Pat. No. 5,400,529 to Bell et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,078 to Cochrane and U.S. Pat. No. 3,977,098 to Chalmers. However, these designs teach the use of heel lacing in boots and therein incorporate more complicated and/or bulky fastening means and thus, are not suitable for typical shoes, especially sporting shoes. Moreover, lacing systems that only wrap around the heel of the shoe do not provide maximum securing of the entire foot within the shoe.
In an attempt to solve some of the above-discussed deficiencies of exterior lacing, U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,078 to Cochrane discloses a partially internally laced shoe. However, the internal lacing only wraps around the heel of the shoe; traditional lacing is needed for the upper center of the shoe. Nonetheless, even with the dual lacing system, Cochrane fails to secure the entire foot within a shoe as adequately as provided by the present invention. Moreover, the exterior lacing of Cochrane remains susceptible to snagging and premature wear and tear.
An additional deficiency noted in previous designs is the need to utilize two hands to tie and/or secure the lacing in position. For many handicap individuals, traditional shoes can be difficult if not impossible to tie and/or adequately secure around the feet. Additionally, many professional and nonprofessional athletes and other users find it both interfering and time consuming to use both hands to retie traditional shoe lacing that may become easily untied during use. In an attempt to overcome these deficiencies designs have been proposed that allow one hand or finger tightening. An example of such a design may be found by reference to U.S. Pat. No. 4,130,949 to Seidel. Although Seidel discloses a one-pull tightening system, as with other previous deficient designs, Seidel's lacing system only tightens the upper center portion of the shoe and thus fails to adequately secure the entire foot within the shoe.
It is readily apparent that a new and improved internally laced shoe is needed that provides for a one-pull lacing system that wraps around the entire shoe and foot, including the heel, to provide means for more adequately securing the entire foot within the shoe. It is, therefore, to the provision of such improvements that the present invention is directed.